You already have marketing. You want a monthly outside judgment by someone not in the room.
SFMA treats this as a Bay Area marketing agency problem, not a vague strategy exercise. The repair path runs through website clarity, SEO, AI visibility, paid ads, messaging, conversion, and lead quality.
Marketing is running. The team is busy. The metrics look fine on the slide. Something feels off and you can't ask the people doing the work because they're the people doing the work. A 60-minute check-in once a month names what's moving, what's not, and what to stop.
We have marketing. I want a monthly outside check. Is that a thing or am I overthinking it?
It's a thing. The check is the part your team can't do because they're the team doing the work.
Marketing pain compounds in weeks, not quarters.
Quarterly reviews catch quarterly problems. Most marketing pain is monthly. A campaign that started leaking in week two is a write-off by week ten. A page that stopped converting on a Tuesday is six lost weeks of pipeline by next QBR.
The check-in exists because daily execution can't audit itself, and a quarterly board cycle is too slow to catch what broke in week two.
Three things a monthly check-in catches that internal reviews miss
One. Pipeline drift. Lead volume is fine, lead quality is sliding, sales is quietly building a separate top-of-funnel and not telling marketing. By month two, the company is running two demand engines that don't talk.
Two. Page-funnel drift. The homepage was rewritten. The conversion event still fires. Nobody noticed conversion rate dropped 18% because the dashboard is averaged over 90 days.
Three. Spend drift. One ad set keeps eating budget because it shows good clicks. Closed-loop reporting shows zero opportunities from it in 60 days. Nobody pauses it because nobody owns the pause decision.
None of those numbers fix themselves on their own. Internal reviews don't surface them because internal reviews are run by the people whose numbers they are. The monthly check-in is outside the room on purpose.
Four reads. Same four every month. The pattern is the point.
Read one: the last 30 days of marketing output
Every campaign, page change, ad set, content piece, or email sequence shipped in the last month. What got skipped. What got pushed. What didn't get said out loud at standup. The first month maps it. Every month after, we compare to last month.
Read two: pipeline math
Lead volume, qualified rate, opportunity rate, win rate. We compare what marketing claims as sourced versus what sales counts as marketing-sourced. Madison Logic's 2024 work on B2B handoff failure points at the same gap every time. The check-in names which side of the handoff is leaking.
Read three: the buyer's interpretation of the page
We open your homepage and three key landing pages cold. We assess them the way Gartner's 2024 buyer-journey data says buyers interpret them: skim, compare, leave. If the page is doing first-meeting work instead of buyer-three-tabs-open work, we say so.
Read four: one thing to stop
Every check-in names one thing to stop. Stop-decisions are harder than start-decisions in marketing. The team will defend the existing campaign because their work is in it. The outside judgment makes the stop-call easier.
What founders tell us in month four
- "We're shipping a lot but I can't tell what's working"
- "Marketing says leads are good, sales says they're junk"
- "Conversion dropped and nobody flagged it for six weeks"
- "We doubled spend, pipeline didn't move"
- "Board asked one question I couldn't answer in real time"
What founders say after three check-ins
- The two campaigns that move pipeline are named
- Marketing and sales agree on what a qualified lead is
- One conversion drop got caught the month it happened
- One ad set got paused, budget moved to the page that converts
- Board slide is a one-pager, not a deck
Founders who run their own marketing judge it from inside the room. The data says that's the gap.
The case for a monthly outside judgment isn't a hot take. It's been written up by operators and analyst houses for the last few years. Same pattern every time: the team doing the work can't audit the work, and quarterly cadence is too slow.
| Source | Year | Finding relevant to the monthly check-in |
|---|---|---|
| Gartner · The B2B Pipeline Problem | 2024 | Most B2B service teams don't have a marketing problem, they have a pipeline problem that internal reviews never name. |
| Gartner · Future of B2B Sales | 2024 | ~70% of the buying journey is over before a vendor is contacted. The page and the funnel do the early work, not the team. |
| McKinsey · B2B Pulse Survey | 2024 | Buying committees average 10 people, 10+ interactions, hybrid channels. One reviewer inside the company can't see the full read. |
| Forrester / Marketo | 2023 | ~79% of MQLs never convert. ~73% never get contacted by sales. The leak is in handoff, not lead count. |
| Pavilion · State of Marketing | 2024 | Fractional CMO retainers run $12K-$25K/mo. A monthly outside judgment is the lighter complement, not a replacement. |
| HubSpot · State of Marketing | 2024 | Top-performing B2B sites publish more specific buyer-question answers than competitors, not more pages. The audit reads specificity, not volume. |
"Most B2B service firms don't have a marketing problem. They have a pipeline problem. The two get conflated because the same team owns both, and nobody outside the team is reading the pipeline math each month."Gartner · The B2B Pipeline Problem · 2024
Want one outside operator reading your last 30 days, every 30 days, with named evidence on the page?
Start the check-in · $1,500/moOne hour on the call. One page in your inbox. Every 30 days.
The check-in is not a 30-page strategy deck. It's not a dashboard. It's not a consulting engagement. It's a recurring outside judgment with a written record.
- One 60-minute call per month. You bring your last 30 days. We assess it cold.
- One-page written summary inside 48 hours. Top three working, top three not working, one focus, one stop-decision.
- Two named sources every month. A specific essay, dataset, or benchmark we want you to read before the next call.
- Slack/email between calls is fine. Short questions get short answers. We don't bill for between-call notes.
- Month-to-month. No lock. Pause anytime. If the check-in isn't moving a number after three months, we name that on the call and stop.
- Next step. If a bigger problem surfaces (positioning, paid media architecture, conversion), we point to the right main marketing offer. Marketing Strategy Review ($5K), Positioning Sprint ($7.5K), Paid Media Audit ($2.5K), Conversion Review ($3.5K), AI Visibility Audit ($2.5K).
If you want a deeper one-time review before committing to the monthly cadence, the Bay Area Marketing Review Call is $500 flat. One call, one written summary, no retainer. Founders who want a single outside judgment before deciding usually start there.
What Bay Area founders ask before the first check-in.
How is this different from a fractional CMO?
Pavilion's 2024 compensation data shows fractional CMOs at $12K-$25K/mo for ongoing execution leadership. The check-in is $1,500/mo for one outside judgment. Use the CMO when nobody is steering. Use the check-in when someone is and you want a second pair of eyes.
What if my VP Marketing thinks this is a threat?
Most VPs we've worked with want it. They're inside the work and they know they can't audit themselves. The check-in gives them a written record they can take to the board without it reading as self-promotion.
Can my marketing lead come to the call?
Yes. It usually accelerates the read. We do ask that the founder be on at least one call per quarter so the read connects to the company-level pipeline math, not simply marketing tactics.
What evidence do you cite in the summary?
Named publishers and dated reports. Krzyzek, Gartner, McKinsey, Forrester/Marketo, Madison Logic, Pavilion, HubSpot, ICONIQ, ICONIQ Growth. No "studies show". Every claim traces to a URL.
Do you do the marketing work?
The check-in is read-and-name only. If you want execution, we point to a sister practice or the relevant main marketing offer. No upsell pressure inside the check-in.
What if our metrics are bad?
That's exactly when the check-in matters. The first month names which numbers are bad on purpose (strategy) versus bad by drift (execution). The split usually surprises the team.
Can I run this remote, or is it Bay Area only?
Bay Area and Silicon Valley by design. Inquiries outside that focus are redirected when the fit belongs to another Stan Consulting path.
How fast can we start?
First check-in usually inside one week of inquiry. Recurring slot gets locked on first call.
Related pain points and marketing offers.
Sources cited on this page
- Gartner. Future of B2B Sales. Gartner, 2024. gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
- Gartner. Future of B2B Sales. Gartner Research, 2024. gartner.com/en/sales/insights/future-of-sales
- McKinsey & Company. B2B Pulse Survey. McKinsey, 2024. mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights
- Forrester / Marketo. Marketing Lead Conversion Research. Forrester, 2023. forrester.com/blogs/category/b2b-marketing
- Pavilion. State of Marketing / Compensation. Pavilion, 2024. joinpavilion.com/resources
- TrustRadius. B2B Buying Disconnect Report. TrustRadius, 2023. TrustRadius report page
- HubSpot. State of Marketing Report. HubSpot Research, 2024. hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
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